Black­stone in talks to buy Thom­son Reuters unit

US PRI­VATE eq­uity firm Black­stone Group is in ad­vanced talks to buy about 55% of the fi­nan­cial and risk busi­ness of Thom­son Reuters for more than $17bn (R202bn), three sources said.

Thom­son Reuters’ board, the sources said, was ex­pected to meet yes­ter­day to dis­cuss Black­stone’s all­cash of­fer for the F&R busi­ness which sup­plies news, data and an­a­lyt­ics to banks and in­vest­ment houses around the world.

The unit con­trib­utes more than half of Thom­son Reuters’ an­nual rev­enues.

Thom­son Reuters said “it is in ad­vanced dis­cus­sions with Black­stone re­gard­ing a po­ten­tial part­ner­ship in its F&R busi­ness.”

A spokesper­son for Black­stone de­clined to com­ment.

Un­der the terms of the Black­stone of­fer, Thom­son Reuters would re­tain 45% of the F&R busi­ness as part of a part­ner­ship with the US buy­out firm, sources said.

Reuters was un­able to de­ter­mine who would lead the newly formed com­pany.

Thom­son Reuters would hold on to its in­ter­na­tional news ser­vice, Reuters, along with its Le­gal and Tax and Ac­count­ing di­vi­sions.

Reuters is ex­pected to con­tinue to sup­ply news to F&R’s flag­ship desk­top prod­uct, Eikon, as well as to other prod­ucts, though the de­tails of the ar­range­ment could not be de­ter­mined. – Reuters